It was an electrifying announcement: a stone
burial box had come to light in Jerusalem that may have contained the bones of
Jesus' half-brother James. An Aramaic inscription on the artifact reads:
Ya'akov bar-Yosef akhui diYeshua, "James, son of Joseph, brother of
Jesus."

If these three names are our familiar New Testament
personalities, then this is a discovery for which the term "astounding" is not
too strong. This would mark the first time that Jesus' name has appeared in
stone from the first century.

While this October announcement may be
gladdening - even sensational - news, believers should always weigh such
evidence carefully.

Researchers have uncovered a 2,000-year-old ossuary - a
box that held bones - that bears the inscription "James, son of Joseph, brother
of Jesus." This may be the first archaeological evidence that refers directly
to Jesus and identifies James as His brother.

What are the facts? An ossuary is a
limestone box for burying bones that was used by Jews primarily in the first
century AD. As a kind of space-saving way to deal with the dead, this
"second-burial" system first interred the deceased in sepulchers to decompose
for a year or two, then gathered the bones that remained and put them into
stone boxes or "ossuaries." Jesus Himself was in the first stage of this burial
method, and had it not been for the resurrection, His bones would have been
transferred to an ossuary a year or two after His crucifixion and death.

Archaeological aidsIn fact, three crucial ossuary
discoveries in the last quarter century have been extremely supportive of the
New Testament records.

Critics used to doubt that Jesus was ever nailed
to a cross, insisting that John's Gospel was indulging in fantasy rather than
fact in claiming such. No longer! In 1968, at a suburb of northern Jerusalem,
the ossuary of Yohanan benHa'galgol was discovered. While otherwise unknown,
this man had been crucified, as the seven-inch iron spike still transfixing his
heel bones offers mute testimony.

In November 1990, the bones of the
first Biblical personality ever discovered came to light in another ossuary,
which was magnificently carved with perfect fluting along the edges and two
great whorls adorning its face. Clearly, this bone box must have been adorned
for an important person. And, indeed, on the other side was his name, incised
twice in Aramaic: Iosef bar-Caiapha, or "Joseph, son of Caiaphas," the
high priest who indicted Jesus before Pontius Pilate on Good Friday, a major
Biblical figure and another stunning discovery.

Now, a dozen years
later, we have number three: the James ossuary, a slightly trapezoidal box
about 20 inches long, 10 inches wide, and 12 inches high, with removable stone
lid. It has no adornment other than a narrow marginal border about a half-inch
wide.

Is the Ossuary authentic? Let's explore the evidence
pro and con.

Against authenticity: Unfortunately, the
ossuary was not discovered in situ, that is, it did not come to light in
the course of an archaeological dig as was the case in the two previous.
Accordingly, the context of this find is lost, and we have no exact idea where
the ossuary was found, what else was buried there and the like - priceless
evidence that has now vanished. Some 30 years ago, an Arab antiquities dealer
in Jerusalem sold the ossuary for a few hundred dollars to a now-51-year-old
engineer named Oded Golan living in Tel Aviv.

The dealer stated that
the ossuary - one of many rifled from ancient tombs - came from the Silwan area
in the Kidron Valley, southeast of the site where the Jerusalem Temple once
stood.

Worse still, the bones originally inside the ossuary had been
dumped out somewhere, which is the case in nearly all ossuaries not discovered
by archaeologists. If the skeletal remains were left inside such bone boxes,
looters would encounter hostility from ultra-orthodox Jews, who object to all
disruption of human remains.

For authenticity: The
evidence for authenticity of the James ossuary, however, is much stronger. The
very fact that an ossuary is involved all but proves its first-century origin,
since the only time Jews buried in that fashion was from approximately 20 B.C.
to the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70.

The fragile condition of
the ossuary cracks that widened en mute to its first public display at the
Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto further attest to its antiquity. Any
perpetrator of archaeological fraud would have found some way to make the
"find" public much sooner than was actually the case. And finally, the Israel
Geological Survey submitted the ossuary to a variety of scientific tests, which
determined that the limestone of the ossuary had a patina or sheen consistent
with a many-centuries-long sojourn in a cave.

Is the inscription
authenic?In a word, yes. The same patina covers the incised lettering
of the inscription as the rest of the surface. If the inscription was recent,
this would not be the case.

It is true that the first part of the
inscription, "James son of Joseph," seems more deeply incised than the latter
"brother of Jesus," but this may have no significance. Even if it does,
differences in the hardness of the limestone may have been responsible, or the
carver may have been pressed by time. Conceivably, he or someone else may have
thought to add the further defining clause subsequently in view of its
importance.

The script is cursive Aramaic - fully consistent with
first-century lettering, according to Dr. Andre Lemaire, the Parisian
epigrapher who first saw the importance of the inscription when Golan invited
him to view the ossuary in his apartment. Furthermore, the inscription was not
incised with modern tools, and contains no elements not available in the
ancient world. The inscription, then, appears genuine.

Our James,
Joseph and Jesus?Here the evidence is not as conclusive. All three
names were frequent for that era. Josephus, for example, mentions a score of
different Jesuses in the first century. But this exact relationship Joseph the
father, James a son, and Jesus a brother has never been cited in any
extrabiblical ancient literary source or on stone. According to best estimates,
only a tiny fraction of Jerusalem men would have had such a relationship, and
even fewer would have been able to afford an ossuary.

Even more
extraordinary is the inclusion of the phrase "brother of Jesus." With but one
exception, the hundreds of ossuaries discovered in the Jerusalem area mention
only the deceased and his father. Clearly, this "Jesus" was additionally
inscribed as "brother" because of His importance.

In this embellished ossuary
inscribed with the name "Iosef Bar-Caiapha" were the bones of six people,
including those of a man archeologists believe was Caiaphas, the high priest
who interrogated Jesus before turning Him over to Pontius
Pilate.

Critics, however, object that if these were
the familiar Biblical personalities, the epithet "of Nazareth" should have been
added to the name of Jesus and "the Just" suffixed to James. Some ornamentation
on the ossuary would also have been anticipated, as with Calaphas', rather than
this otherwise blank stone box. But these are arguments from silence, which
also fail in view of the date of James' death - A.D. 62 and his presumed
ossuary transfer - 63 or 64 - a time of emergency in Jerusalem when Christians
were persecuted and the great Jewish rebellion was on the brink of exploding,
as it did two years later.

Accordingly, there is strong (though not absolutely
conclusive) evidence that, yes, the ossuary and its inscription are not only
authentic, but that the inscribed names are the New Testament personalities.
Hershall Shanks, the editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, who broke
the story, is joined by a host of other authorities who support this conclusion
in varying degrees.

Personally, I give it a 7 on my handy 1 - to - 10
scale.

James the Just This, then, is the man who is named as
one of Jesus' four half-brothers in Matt. 13:55. (Roman
Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and others who advocate that Mary was always a
virgin claim that these brothers were either children of Joseph by a previous
marriage or cousins of Jesus. Most other Christians, on the basis of Matt
1:25, assume that they were indeed children of Joseph and Mary after
Jesus' birth.)

An unbeliever until Jesus' resurrection, James - not
Peter - became the first bishop of the Christian church (Acts 15), the author
of the New Testament epistle bearing his name, and an early Christian martyr.

Flavius Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian, reports that
"James, the brother of Jesus who was called 'the Christ'" was held in high
repute by many in Jerusalem, including Jews, who called him not only "James the
Just," but "Camel Knees" because his were knobby from prolonged kneeling in
prayer.

Still, he was stoned to death by the Sanhedrin in the year 62.

Eusebius, the early Christian church historian, adds detail to that
stoning in his Church History. The Jerusalem priests had expected James
to denounce his brother, Jesus, publicly when they placed him before crowds at
the temple. Instead, he boldly testified that Jesus was the Messianic Christ.
Pitched down from the temple as a result James was finally dispatched by a
laundryman using a fuller's club.

That death, however, saved many
Christian lives. After James' martyrdom, believers fled from Jerusalem to the
Decapolis (Greek, meaning "Ten Cities," a Hellenistic league of the
first century B.C. to the second century A.D.), thus escaping the horrors of
the bloody Jewish war with Rome a very short time afterward. Three centuries
later, Eusebius reported that the bishop's chair of James was still preserved
by the Jerusalem Christians.

If the James ossuary had preserved human
remains that included a cracked or crushed skull, the identification would then
be conclusive. Still, bone fragments have been found inside the ossuary.
If a DNA test is performed on these, we may be able to learn who today could be
related to that first-century James - and perhaps Jesus Himself.

In
view of such discoveries, it's a fascinating time to be alive - especially for
Christians!

Dr. Paul L. Maier is fourth
vice president of The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and professor of ancient
history at Western Michigan University.Matthew 13:55 - Isn't this
the carpenter's son? Isn't his mother's name Mary, and aren't his brothers
James, Joseph, Simon and Judas?

Matthew 1:25 -
But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the
name Jesus.Reprinted with
permission from The Lutheran
Witness, January 2003. You can subscribe to The Lutheran Witness
by calling 1-800-325-3381.